At the top of fantasy drafts this season, Mike Trout and Jose Altuve are virtual locks to be selected at #1 and #2. After them, experts are split between a handful of options for the third overall pick. As of now, Nolan Arenado is the most popular choice, but with Paul Goldschmidt, Trea Turner, Giancarlo Stanton, Mookie Betts and even Clayton Kershaw getting some expert consideration. While tremendous ball players, Stanton and Kershaw are constant health risks. Mookie is coming off a frustrating season, where his stat-line was near-identical to Brett Gardner’s rather than what you’d want out of a first-round pick. Then we’ve got Goldy, who the experts have quickly soured on following the news of the Diamondbacks introducing a humidor to Chase Field. Sure, he will still steal the bases, but no one is immune to physics so his power numbers will sustain a significant blow.
That leaves us with two options at #3: Arenado and Turner. Arenado is quite possibly the safest pick in the entire draft. He hits 35 to 45 homers every. single. year. He drives in 130 batters every. single. year. He even bats .290 every season. Now, you might say that Turner doesn’t belong in the conversation because he comes with question marks like the others who were already eliminated from consideration:
- He was injured last season
- He doesn’t have much power
- He saw regression last season
So why would you even consider taking him in the first round, let alone third behind Trout and Altuve? It really is quite simple: He has a better shot than anyone to be the top fantasy baseball player this season. Better than Arenado, better than Bryce Harper, Clayton Kershaw and Giancarlo Stanton. Yes, if you ran 10,000 simulations the 2018 fantasy baseball season, he would even outperform Mike Trout and Jose Altuve more often than vice versa. Let me explain:
Gear up for your draft with our MLB Draft Simulator 
First, let me put to rest the charges against him. He did not miss 60 games last year because of a soft-tissue injury that is typically reserved for injury-prone players, nor is it one he needed to recover and bounce back from in the off-season. He was hit by a pitch which broke his wrist. That is a 100% clear as day fluke. It won’t carry over into the 2018 season, nor does it make him more likely to spend time on the DL in 2018. That could have happened to anyone.
Now for the power: In the past two seasons, Turner has 719 at-bats. In that time, he has hit 24 home runs and 76 extra-base hits. Alex Bregman has 50 more big-league at-bats than Turner in the last two years. No one denies that Bregman has sufficient power, so let’s see how the two line up:
- Turner: 1 HR per 29.9 AB
- Bregman: 1 HR per 30.4 AB
“But that’s not fair, Bregman is bigger and clearly has more power, so Turner’s homers must have been a fluke.” —–Oh really?
- Turner: 6’1″, 185 pounds
- Bregman: 6’0″, 180 pounds
In Carlos Correa’s sophomore season, he hit a homer one in every 27.9 AB. Lindor was 1 in 40.3, and who is to say that Turner has reached his power peak? Remember, it was just two year’s ago that Charlie Blackmon was a speed and average only guy with marginal power. Suddenly, he went from hitting 15 to 20 HR per year all the way up to 37 in 2017. Granted, I am not expecting any kind of power surge from Turner, nor does the argument depend on it. That does not mean, though, that he is without power. In fact, his HR-rate thus far in his career has nearly been a full standard deviation above the mean for fantasy shortstops.
I hear the regression bit every week. It’s a new term to the fantasy sports world, so I blame no one for misunderstanding it–I had to learn about it once two, folks. Regression is not only negative, it can be positive as well. Player’s stats are not regressing to zero. They are regressing to the mean. Think of it this way: Say a player performs at a “10” in year 1, then he performs at an “8” in year 2. Regression to the mean would not tell us he is likely to be a “6” in year 3. Rather, it would mean he is expected to see positive regression toward “9”. Perhaps he struggles and is a “7”, but he could also boom and be an “11”. The point is that “9” appears to be his anchor point, and considering he was by far the best fantasy baseball player in his three months as a rookie, it is safe to say that “9” is quite good. Then, you’ve got to factor in that he is still just 24 year’s old and that his stage in the career arc implies his anchor has yet to reach a climax.
What it comes down to is that Turner’s numbers have been downright ridiculous this far in his career. Sure, he comes with some risk, but if he didn’t, he’d be a lock at #1. Just check out his 162 game career average compared to Trout, Altuve and Arenado:
- Trea Turner: 109 R, 20 HR, 70 RBI, 66 SB, .304 BA
- Jose Altuve: 112 R, 14 HR, 66 RBI, 38 SB, .316 BA
- Mike Trout: 121 R, 35 HR, 100 RBI, 29 SB, .306 BA
- Nolan Arenado: 95 R, 33 HR, 114 RBI, 2 SB, .290 BA
Yes, Altuve and Arenado have been hitting for more power lately while the batting averages have been better, and Trout obviously has superior statistics, but I am not saying Turner is better than Altuve, only that his stats are actually comparable thus far. Plus, there is this: Turner stole 22 bases in one month last season! That alone would have been good enough to finish 19th in baseball over the full season. It is the equivalent of hitting 38 homers in one month. I cannot overstate the impact one player stealing 70 bases has for a fantasy roster. You could draft Turner 3rd then build the rest of your lineup entirely on power only guys and you’d still finish in the top 5 for steals. Imagine doing the same thing with a power guy. You’d need 180 homers from him.
Fantasy baseball value is derived by determining how many standard deviations a player performs below or above the mean at his position in all five categories. Let’s translate the career averages of the four players above into their SD above/below the positions they play in the five primary offensive categories:
- Turner: +1.8 R, +0.5 HR, +0.2 RBI, +4.5 SB, +1.7 BA = 8.7
- Altuve: +2.0 R, +0.0 HR, +0.1 RBI, +2.2 SB, +2.3 BA = 6.6
- Trout: +2.1 R, +1.8 HR, +1.7 RBI, 1.6 SB, +1.4 BA* = 8.6
- Arenado: +1.0 R, +1.5 HR, +2.6 RBI, -0.7 SB, +0.6 BA = 4.0
*Remember, Trout is measured against other outfielders while Turner and Altuve against SS and 2B.
Don’t get the wrong impression; Arenado is an amazing fantasy baseball player and extremely reliable, but it just goes to show how far ahead the other three are that the clear-cut #4 fantasy player is light years behind them. I’m definitely taking Trout #1 and Aluve #2 because they have a more consistent and reliable track record, but in terms of fantasy upside, there isn’t a soul in baseball with more than Trea Turner, who has yet to reach his ceiling, so I’ll be gladly taking him at #3 this season.
Nail your draft with our award-winning fantasy baseball tools
Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher | SoundCloud | TuneIn | Google Play
